Mehul & Sejal – Vintage E-session
It is my pleasure to bring you the engagement session for Mehul and Sejal. When Sejal first told me about her idea for their E-session, I was a bit surprised but very excited. Unlike the traditional E-sessions, they wanted to try to do their session in a 1950’s fashion! If you know me, you know how I love exploring new ventures of photography, and I especially like to do non-traditional photos. When a couple comes to me asking for something completely un-traditional like this, without me suggesting it in anyway, I automatically know that it will be a good time and result in some killer images. As excited as I was about doing a 1950’s themed session, it also introduced me with a lot of stress and worrying. First of all, what would be the ideal location for the shoot, when would be a good time, what would they wear, how would the images look? After a bit of thinking, we decided that New York city would be ideal for a session such as this, so we met up in the big apple for this session. Next, I had to worry about actual places we could shoot. Unfortunately, any place I would scout, had modernized elements around it. I would find a really nice building with a 50’s look, only to find homeless people sleeping there and neon dvd signs around the corner. I would find a nice street that could add to the scene, only to have hundreds of yellow cabs taking up the curb. So when you try to find a vintage area without any modern day things in a busy city such as NY, it’s almost impossible. However, as we approached closer to the shoot, I got a better idea of what they wanted, and I finally relaxed a bit. Since it was pretty much impossible to find a nice 50’s themed area without a movie set (there weren’t any 50’s style film or tv shooting, I checked), we decided to do a mix of old with the new. It would be vintage meets contemporary. I left the costumes and outfits up to Sejal, hoping she would be able to find something for them that fit within that period. When I finally met up with them for the first time in their outfits, I was blown away. Sejal had done such a wonderful job of not only finding the clothing that represented the era, but she even found accessories that added the would add that fine touch to their photo. I was really impressed. Unfortunately, as we got closer to the shoot, we found out that the weather may not be fully on our side. On top of that, I caught a cold on the day of the shoot (just my luck), and some of the places I had originally scouted were closed early. Who closes a restaurant at 8pm on a Saturday? Regardless of all the setbacks and me being sick, we all pushed through and hit the locations hard, and I ended up capturing what I feel are some of the best images I have ever shot. Many of these are not only memorable, but also my favorite work that I have done so far. Both Sejal and Mehul were troopers, and put up with me guiding them all throughout the city. At one point, Mehul walked through 1/2 of central park on his bear feet since his shoes were a bit tight, and Sejal gladly carried the vintage picnic basket they had. Now that’s dedication.
I took some time to develop these and customized some new processing, specifically for this set. I wanted to try to do my best trying to mimic the old school feel without over doing it. Since there were so many awesome shots, I decided to do a slideshow, and then post some of my fav. images. As always, your comments are always appreciated.
The Slideshow
E-Session
skipping rocks like the good ‘ol huck fin days 🙂
My favorite shot from the session!